American History

By Richard Conniff…

Before September 11, 2001, many people thought of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—if they thought of them at all—as…

In December 1792, a 46-year-old French botanist named André Michaux arrived in Philadelphia to visit with some of the city’s most…

Q: Why did James Smithson leave his fortune to the United States and not to institutions in his native England?—Helen Scott | New York…

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking the starting of World War II, the leaders of a Warsaw-based chapter of the…

When the nation’s first FDA-approved Covid-19 vaccine was injected into the arm of intensive care nurse Sandra Lindsay on December 14…

Tony Fauci beams like a schoolboy who has simply earned straight As as he holds up the medal draped round his neck, professing that…

At the peak of the Roaring Twenties, the Whittemore Gang focused banks and jewellery shops throughout the East Coast, stealing upward…

The profound challenges of this past year have brokered an equally profound moment for the Smithsonian Institution to bring its…

In 1872, the U.S. economy was growing as the young nation industrialized and expanded westward. Then in the autumn, a sudden shock…